ATLANTA — “Think traditionally, but without traditional thinking.”
Those were the words of Ross Bjork, the still-new Ohio State athletic director during the Saturday morning media day ahead of Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship game. The question was about the balanced approach taken by his football program, and also by the opponent, Notre Dame. The Buckeyes and Fighting Irish inarguably rank among the most tradition-rich in the 155-year history of college football. Yet, here they are, after a combined 271 seasons, the second- and fourth-winningest programs of all time, having steered their way to the final game of this season by embracing modernized approaches to the sport while honoring the history that is as much a part of their DNA as helmets and shoulder pads.
Maintaining the shine on those silver and gold helmets by piling up silver and gold in the form of NIL money.
“We want to work at these places because of what they are and what they have been and the success they’ve enjoyed,” Bjork said. “But we have also been charged with ensuring that’s what they continue to be.”
Bjork said it just as the Buckeyes were ending their media day session and the players who earned a spot in the title game, the ones who cost $20 million to assemble, according to Bjork, filed in around him and headed for the team bus. His mantra about respecting the past while moving toward the future was uttered as 45-year-old head coach Ryan Day was holding court at a podium just over his boss’s shoulder. Day’s big-game failures lit the spark needed to raise those millions to sign those players who are now in Atlanta needing only one more win to earn Ohio State’s first national title in a decade.
When the Buckeyes exited the room, their seats were filled by Notre Dame, whose roster includes 10 additions via transfer, once a taboo subject in South Bend, Indiana. The players opted to play in Northern Indiana partly due to the just-established coffers of name, image and likeness money. Those new arrivals included the quarterback from Duke who led the Irish downfield late against Penn State in the CFP semifinals, setting up the transfer kicker from South Carolina who kicked the game-winning field goal. Now, Notre Dame football is on the cusp of its first national title since 1988, when cell phones were still carried in shoulder bags. As the Irish players took their places, coach Marcus Freeman, the human energy shot, immediately and unknowingly parroted Bjork.
“Our everyday walk is spent with one foot firmly planted in our past, but that other foot is always stepping in our future.”
Is that easy, Coach?
“No. But it’s also not a burden. It’s a privilege. Once you understand that, it’s worth it. And what makes it worth it is … well …”
With a smile, the 39-year-old coach — a former All-Big Ten Ohio State defender — swept his hand broadly, toward Mercedes-Benz Stadium across the street, toward the gold-wearing Notre Dame faithful in the nearby Playoff Fan Central craning their necks to see their Irish, and toward the cylindrical gold CFP championship trophy, sitting atop a podium in Freeman’s sightline.
“You win football games by being smart and working hard, that’s no secret,” Freeman’s quarterback, Riley Leonard, said. “But you also have to evolve. I think that in college football now, as much as it keeps changing, programs and universities have to change with it. Your choice is to either do that or get left behind.”
But evolution is also a choice. The dinosaurs didn’t have to walk into the tar pits. And college football programs — even old-timers such as Ohio State and Notre Dame — don’t have to walk into the quicksand of mediocrity, led there by the blinders of obligation to keep on keeping on the same way that Knute Rockne and Woody Hayes did.
The greatest challenge isn’t changing the minds of the people inside the football building. They are living it. They are going to do whatever it takes,” former Notre Dame QB Brady Quinn, now a college football analyst for Fox, said in December as his alma mater began its CFP run. “It’s making the people who support the program understand what needs to be done. Making them understand that the way it always worked, the way their favorite teams were built, is not how it works now. And then explaining that their support that might have always just been rooting for the team, even buying season tickets, that support needs to be backed monetarily. That makes some people uncomfortable, but it is also the reality. And it pays off. Literally.”
Freeman’s predecessor at Notre Dame, Brian Kelly, has come under fire from those who love the Irish, and some of that is warranted. But criticism that he didn’t understand the modern business model like Freeman isn’t entirely accurate. That model has changed dramatically since Kelly’s sudden departure for LSU three years ago. Even while he still had the job, finishing his 12 seasons only 13 wins shy of Rockne’s record 105 wins, Kelly openly described the daily tug-of-war between pulling Notre Dame into the current times while also wrestling with the longtime program backers who resisted change, aka “the Gold Seats.”
For example, replacing the analog clock and scoreboards that had long sat atop the end zone edges of Notre Dame Stadium became a battle as Kelly hoped to add videoboards. After a years-long debate, the compromise was to add the TV screens, but keep them to a modest size, similar to the old scoreboards, and immediately prior to and after games, the displays on those screens were to be changed to digital images of the old clock and scoreboard.
“Those are the challenges that you face at a university like Notre Dame that I don’t believe you do anywhere else, and I certainly coached at a lot of other places,” said Lou Holtz, chuckling when discussing his 11 years in South Bend, winning that 1988 national championship and finishing right behind Rockne with 100 victories. “There is no question that it took cooperation from the administration, after some hard conversations about where we wanted Notre Dame football to be in the future, for me to get a player like Tony Rice [QB on the ’88 team] into school. I went to [then-president] Father Joyce and appealed to him directly. But I was told he would be admitted only if he proved himself academically for a year, to go nowhere near a football game. And guess what? Tony Rice has his degree from Notre Dame and to this day, is one the most beloved players in the history of the program. We found his place, and we did it within the framework of what one might call the Notre Dame Way.”
It was with that same mentality that Freeman went about selling the idea of bringing in transfers — a practice rarely entertained by a school understandably proud of its academic reputation — as something that could still fit into the parameters of the Notre Dame Way. The 2024 roster additions were carefully selected. They were established stars but also largely graduate transfers already with college degrees. Two players were required to wait until summer to enroll after their degrees were completed, and in the meantime, were relegated to spring practice observers.
Leonard is an undergrad, but no one questions Duke’s academic credentials. He is also a Notre Dame legacy, the great-grandson of James Curran, a 1940 Irish graduate who played football under head coach Elmer Layden, one of the fabled Four Horsemen.
“The transfer portal has really helped us because it’s allowed us to address specific needs, but it’s also helped us distinguish ourselves as a program in the sense that our kids are still picking Notre Dame for a host of reasons, not just NIL,” said Jack Swarbrick, who served as Notre Dame’s AD from 2008 to 2024 and made the decision to promote Freeman after Kelly’s departure. “No one would come to Notre Dame just for NIL. It’s too hard. If all you worried about is the compensation, you’ll go get it somewhere else. … So, for all the schools that are just recruiting with an emphasis on compensation, we’re now even more distinct than we used to be, and I think that’s helped.
“We have to be very careful in the transfer portal. It’s why nine out of 10 are grad students. It’s just really hard to get undergraduate transfers into Notre Dame.”
As Freeman bolstered his roster in the most gold-helmeted fashion, many who had worn those helmets paved the NIL road. That effort was anchored by a collective kick-started by Quinn, with a stated mission of proving to those Gold Seats who feared the future that their shared alma mater could keep up with the times and still do it on their terms. Friends of the University of Notre Dame — FUND — paid athletes for charity work. Now that the NIL structure has changed again, FUND has been closed, handing over the reins to for-profit collective Rally, designed to better handle the next imminent sea change — revenue sharing.
“It is very important to all of us to do everything we can to honor the hard work and investment that so many people are putting in us, especially the former players,” said sophomore defensive back Christian Grey, who hauled in an interception that set up that final CFP semifinal-winning drive for Leonard & Co. “To me, that’s also learning the history of Notre Dame football. My high school English teacher [in St. Louis] was a Notre Dame grad and he taught me that as soon as I committed. He gave me a Four Horseman poster and it’s been on my wall ever since. It reminds me of what we are playing for. Past and present.”
Meanwhile, it was Ryan Day who spurred the NIL and roster revolution in Columbus. Bjork took over as Ohio State AD one year ago, mere days after Buckeyes archenemy Michigan had won its first national championship in 26 years — this after beating OSU for the third straight season. He hadn’t even unpacked his office when Day approached him with a detailed plan on how to catch up to Michigan. Together, they drummed up financial support, having to point only to the Wolverines’ title run as the reason to start cutting checks. Among those listening were former players.
“We had started a collective, the Foundation, in 2023 because we saw what was happening at places like Texas, Alabama, Michigan, you name it, and we knew our school was falling behind,” said Cardale Jones, quarterback on Ohio State’s 2014 team that won the inaugural CFP title. “Sadly, we didn’t get a lot of support from the school itself. But once that commitment started coming from the inside, you see what happened.”
What happened was that $20 million shopping spree that led to a stunning influx and retention of talent, the most impressive offseason this side of the Philadelphia Eagles. And just when it appeared that de facto Avengers assemblage might not pay off — see: two regular-season losses, including the fourth straight to Michigan — the team that entered the newly expanded 12-team CFP as an at-large invitee has been a Buckeye Buzzsaw. A return on investment.
So, is there a long-term place in a universe of perpetual college football change for stuff like gold helmets and Buckeye helmet stickers? The House that Knute Rockne Built and the Horseshoe? “Wake Up the Echoes” and the script Ohio? Stories of Paul Hornung and Hopalong Cassady, or George Gipp and Archie Griffin? Is this fast-forward sport of checks and cascading spreadsheets a place where lighting candles in the Grotto and chanting “O-H! I-O!” is anything other than outdated?
Day and Freeman not only believe all of that can still coexist within the framework of the modern college football world, but the two head coaches who will shake hands at midfield Monday night — one a champion — believe that all of the above is the key to survival. The grounding rod. The only way to properly digest — or enjoy — what this world has become.
It’s why Freeman reinstated the lost tradition of Notre Dame football players attending mass as part of their pregame routine; he has converted to Catholicism. It’s why Day got misty-eyed Saturday morning when asked about Ohio State’s Friday night golf course dinners, with the homemade pecan rolls that became a staple of the Woody Hayes experience, and leading his team into pregame Skull Session pep rallies.
“We are in this to win games and championships, but also to do right by our players and by those who have spent their lives dedicated to the idea of Notre Dame football,” Freeman said. “You lose sight of any part of that, and you’ve lost sight of what this all means.”
Added Day: “As long as they have been playing college football, the greatest programs have stayed great by adapting to the times they are in. You evolve your defense. You evolve your offense. So, you also have to evolve how you run your program. But you can’t run away from who you are. You cannot let that happen. Ever. That’s when you lose a lot more than some football games.”
